Kant and the Task of Contemporary Filipino Philosophy

Romualdo E. Abulad
1986

Konigsberg was an exciting worldly place when Immanuel Kant was born on 22 April
1724. It was a port-city, where commercial and cultural cross-currents freely blew in all directions.
No wonder Konigsberg looked like a world in miniature; it is perhaps partly because of this that
Kant never in his lifetime took a fancy to leaving his place of birth. Why did Kant not travel further
than a hundred miles beyond his native city? Some would like to find fault in this, especially those
who have never considered the possibility of a non-occidental view pointing to past lives as an
explanation for the globalness of our perspectives. All we know is that Kant seemed to have a
knack for comprehending things more universal than Konigsberg. He must have been such an
excellent conversationalist that even women would seek his company at mealtime.
Kant, who was the fourth of eleven children, spoke fondly of his parents, who, he said, he
never saw committing anything morally reproachable. There must be truth to the claim that parents
have a strong influence, conscious or unconscious, upon their children, for people oftentimes still
point to Kant's upbringing as partly responsible for what later took the shape of his famous
Categorical Imperative. Indeed, it was one of my pleasant experiences abroad to have noted that
most Germans still remember Kant, although usually only in connection with this moral principle.
Was it an easy life for Kant? Was it easy for a man to pursue his career relentlessly, even
if it meant waiting for almost fifty years to become a Professor in the University? Even if it meant
rejecting handsome offers from other institutions and instead having to work as a tutor in a few
households? Even if it meant a decade of near-silence before finally coming up with the Kritik der
reinen Vernunft, which was finished when Kant was already 57 years of age? Was it easy, at all,
to be a philosopher? I dare say that it was Kant's devotion to his life's work that enabled him to
stand the test of poverty and unpopularity. It was also this same faithfulness to duty which had
given him so much fulfillment as to make him utter, as he approached death, the judgment that
"Life is god, life is good!" He died on 12 February 1804, beloved and well-known, as a teacher, a
philosopher, and a man. Karl Jaspers said of him that "dogmatism was foreign to his nature",1 and
it is this openmindedness that stares one in the face as one leafs through the pages of his great
works.
Anyone who describes Kant's philosophy as critical is most likely thinking of his three
critical works, namely, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, and Kritik der
Urteilskraft. In the following, I shall deal only with the most salient points of the Critique of Pure
Reason, the book which, I think, holds the key to the entire philosophy of Kant. I hope it shall not
be too far fetched to say that the worth of a Kantian scholar stands and falls on the basis of his
mastery of this extremely difficult book.
 Critique of Pure Reason
If the Critique of Pure Reason is the key to Kant's philosophy, what is the key to the
Critique of Pure Reason? Can one say there is any statement that is capable of opening the door
toward the understanding of this work? I believe there is, but I am afraid to say it bluntly for fear
of sounding simplistic. Indeed, the statement is so bare that almost everyone will think that there
is nothing special about it. Everyone knows how often the remark has been made about the
unknowability of the noumenon, so that even a beginner in philosophy can repeat it with facility.
The key to the Critique of Pure Reason rests in the pronouncement that all our knowledge is
phenomenal and that the noumenon or the thing-in-itself is completely inaccessible to us.2 Simple
as this may sound, one can count on the fingers of one's own hand the people who have really
understood it. Here is one case where it is one thing to say it and quite another thing to know it.
A similar case is to be found in the Indian proposition, Atman and Brahman are one. This
short and easy-to-memorize line is actually the heart of the Vedanta philosophy of Shankara. But
I wonder whether the ease by which we utter the statement is any indication that we have
completely grasped its meaning. Maybe there is, after all, something to the word 'upanishad' which
means 'secret teaching'. And to think that this nonduality of Atman and Brahman constitutes the
essence of the Upanishadic texts!
Going back now to Kant, let us try to see if we can at least try to understand why all human
knowledge is only phenomenal. We can all easily go along with Kant in saying that our knowledge
is only human—that is to say, everything we know is subject to the limitations of our nature.
Knowledge, then, is always only 'human' knowledge.
But Kant goes further than this. It is a proof of his genius that he tries to reconstruct the
humanity of knowledge by uncovering, once and for all, the structure of our cognitive power. This
is why his work takes the form of a criticism, i.e. a critique of pure reason. In criticizing itself,
reason discovers the bounds and limits of its own epistemological reach. We should take seriously
Kant's opinion that what he intends to do is criticize not philosophers and philosophies, but the
rational power itself.3 It is a self-criticism, which eventually results in the highest form of self-
knowledge.4 In this, Kant is only a legitimate heir of Socrates, for whom man's first task is to know
himself.5
Bounds of Knowledge
It is because we are not capable of anything more than human knowledge that the
noumenon or thing-in-itself can never be known to us. We know a thing only according to our
perception of it. Man has a peculiar way of seeing as well as of thinking things. We see objects
spatially and temporally, and think of them in terms of concepts. In Kant's famous words,
"Anschauungen ohne Begriffe sind blind, Gedanke ohne Inhalt sind leer."6
Space and Time are, therefore, indispensable factors in our intuition.7 It is not at all only
accidentally that our language is suffused with where-when indicators. Our nature is such that we
do not observe things except in the context of space and time. Space and Time are thus not objects
outside us; they are forms of our intuition, the background in which the world is experienced by
us. Hence, the world is, for us, only a phenomenon. No matter how deeply we look into things,
they are no more than the things as they appear to us. The noumenon or thing-in-itself is received
by us in no other way than according to the human way of seeing, which is, in time and space.8
So likewise our manner of thinking. Our thoughts are always conceptual.9 And, it is Kant's
considered opinion that there are some concepts which are so basic that we cannot help but think
through them. These indispensable concepts are called by him, following Aristotle, the
categories.10 For example, the concept of cause. How is it that we seem to judge things always in
terms of causality? Hume suggests that it is only out of custom or habit that we connect two events
together.11 Kant seems to have been greatly disturbed by Hume's position. In fact, he admits that
Hume has awakened him from his dogmatic slumbers. Just the same, Kant is not completely
satisfied by Hume's stand on cause and effect. Granted that it is only out of habit that we judge
two events to be causally linked, it is still a question to ponder upon how on earth we are able to
give rise to the concept of cause. How can we ever come upon this notion, if indeed we cannot
directly experience the causal power behind things? Kant's answer is that the concept 'cause' is not
given to us through sense-experience. On the contrary, it is through the concept of causality that
our experience becomes meaningful to us. The birthplace of this concept is the human mind itself,
since it is not borrowed from experience. 'Cause' is an a priori concept.
For Kant, 'cause' is only one of a number of pure concepts. He lists them all down in a
Table of Categories.12 Through these categories we are able to think the way we do. Whether a
man from Mars would think in the same way, is not for us to decide. We only know that we think
in this way, i.e., always in the nature of one who suspects that every event has its own cause.
Indeed, without this common structure of our thought, it is hard to imagine how we can ever
convey our ideas to another. The ground for our ability to communicate and understand each other
rests on our common rationality.
Consequently, the world is thought about by us only under the framework of our thinking
nature. The noumenon is not known to us except as it appears to us. Hence, we know the world
only as a phenomenon.13
Perpetual Peace
It seems that, since Kant, the phenomenality of knowledge has been sufficiently
understood.14 Hegel speaks of science as a product of the phenomenology of the Spirit; Truth, he
says, gradually unfolds itself in time, i.e. through history. In our own days, a whole school of
philosophy has opted to call its method 'phenomenology', and for good reason. Here, an object is
allowed to reveal its essence to pure consciousness so that what remains to be done becomes purely
descriptive. Even Logical Positivism and Linguistic Analysis, while disagreeing with
Phenomenology, can be said to have learned the lesson of the relative character of knowledge, and
this is clearly attested to by their passion to disentangle the nuances of language and meaning
instead of unraveling the nature of things themselves. Almost all the known sciences have taken a
bite of the relativistic nature of objectivity. In fact, my considered opinion is that our culture may
be judged as a product of this type of consciousness.
 Is this culture of relativism enough to satisfy Kant? It seems not. The reason why Kant
undertook the unique enterprise of the critique of pure reason is precisely in order to bring an end
to all the philosophical wrangling which has beset man. Judging by how things stand in our times,
it does seem that this dream of perpetual peace has not yet been realized. Every school of thought
still offers itself in stalwart opposition to another. Each philosophical method or system becomes
a rival of the rest. All this indicates that our consciousness is still antinomian. Rationalists vs.
Empiricists. Phenomenologists vs. Logical Analysts. Idealists vs. Materialists.
Had all this altercation remained on the plane of speculation, it would have mattered little
whether philosophers agreed or disagreed. Philosophy, however, has a way of inconspicuously
affecting the practical life of men, and it is possible that the precarious state of peace in the world
today is rooted in the very confusion that prevails in philosophy. The philosophical source of
contemporary discontent has to be unearthed before the emergence of a new consciousness that
will bring about the desired peace of mankind.
Kant is quite certain that his critique of pure reason is a potent instrument for bringing
about eternal peace. He thinks that through it, all of man's metaphysical problems have found a
solution.15 This is not simply an arrogant man's claim, since Kant himself is of the opinion that his
assertions are much more modest than the commonest contentions of the metaphysicians.16 There
is good reason for agreeing with Kant, since he is most aware of the bounds of our knowledge. He
knows that the usual themes of metaphysical discourse are above the human capacity to know. His
Antinomy of Pure Reason is an eloquent proof that the problems of God, freedom, and immortality
transcend our understanding in as much as they fall outside the scope of the spatio-temporal
world.17 Here, then, knowledge must give way to belief.18 The dogmatists and the empiricists are
equally at fault in taking their exclusive stands as the sole repository of truth. Both Thesis and
Antithesis will remain forever at loggerheads so long as they continue to refuse giving up their
stubborn clinging to their rational hang-ups. In the final analysis, their conflict arises only from a
basic misunderstanding.19 Dogmatists think they 'know' that man is free and that God exists,
whereas materialists think they 'know' the opposite. What both fail to realize is that theirs is a mere
transcendental conflict of speculative reason, something which belongs to an area outside of the
territory of ordinary experience, an area which is above the scope of knowledge. For Kant, neither
the dogmatist nor the empiricist has knowledge, inasmuch as each is merely hanging on stubbornly
to his favorite insight. The result is a perpetual battle between the philosophers of Matter and the
philosophers of Spirit, with neither one being rewarded with the final laurel of victory.
Solution
Why this continuing fruitless war among men? This is precisely the reason for my
contention that it is not enough that we keep in mind the phenomenality of human knowledge.
What we have forgotten is the corollary proposition of Kantian philosophy to the effect that the
noumenon is radically unknowable to us. We become oblivious to the fact that, because we know
the world only according to how it appears to us, we shall never be so God-like as to make us privy
to the nature of the world in itself.20 All our philosophies are, to use Bacon's imaginative term,
theatrical idols which have hitherto prevented us from seeing beyond their narrow confines. We
fail to take note that, just as much as our adversaries do not know, we also do not know. This non-
knowledge is what betrays the depth of our humanity.
Kant is not the first one to refer to our lack of knowledge. Among the Westerners, one can
pick out the Platonic Socrates, forever roaming the forum in search of the non-existent
knowledgeable man. For knowing that he knew nothing, he was dubbed by the Oracle of Delphi
as the wisest of men.21 Then, there was, too, the case of St. Thomas Aquinas, who refused to
complete his Summa Theologiae, itself a great document of what human reason can aspire to attain,
on the ground that it was nothing but straw compared to what was revealed to him.22
This revelation of the inadequacy of man's rationality to know the noumenon has also been
underscored by Eastern philosophers. The Upanishads assert that the Brahman can only be
described negatively as "Neti, neti", "Not this, not this". Lao Tzu likewise says of the Tao that he
knows it not who claims to know it, and that he knows it who knows it not. All that can be said of
the noumenon are but names and forms superimposed upon it. The thing as it is in itself cannot be
known through the usual means of intuitions and concepts. We can say, as a matter of fact, that it
can only be understood by doing away with all the contents of the mind, in much the same way as
Descartes extended his doubt to include all things except the cogito. The weakness of the Cartesian
philosophy lies in its transformation of the 'cogito' into a substance. This is where the rationalism
of Descartes becomes an invitation to dogmatism.
Kant did not succumb to the petrification of the cogito. For him, the nature of that which
exists cannot be determined absolutely. Indeed, even the concept of existence is, to Kant, only a
category of the mind.23 There is nothing at all that can be said of the noumenon without reducing
it to something less than the noumenon. The unknowability of the thing-in-itself is radically
complete.
At this point, one can raise a legitimate objection. How can Kant be so sure there is an
unknowable thing-in-itself? Is not this assertion, that the noumenon cannot be known, itself a type
of noumenal knowledge? To say that reality is beyond our understanding, is this itself to
understand it?
We arrive at a point where Kant joins the rank of the greatest thinkers. Stretching the limits
of their thoughts, most intellectual geniuses reach the stage of what Douglas Hofstadter calls the
"strange loop". Hofstadter mentions the example of the Cretan who declares that all Cretans are
liars. What, then, do we make of this Cretan's statement? Similarly, Kant now avers that it is not
for us to know the noumenon. In saying so, is not Kant stating a truth about the noumenon itself.
The dilemma is as follows: Supposing that this Kantian assertion is already noumenal
knowledge, that would cancel out the assertion itself, since there is at least one noumenal
knowledge possible, namely, Kant's own. If, however, this does not contain noumenal knowledge,
then the statement is relative and not absolute, and thus it is open to error. Either way, the statement
that the noumenon cannot be known is self-defeating.
The way to answer a dilemma is through a counter-dilemma. Supposing Kant's declaration
to be noumenal, that would make it beyond every doubt. If, however, it is not noumenal and is thus
capable of being erroneous, this predicament will only add support to the Kantian premise that the
thing-in-itself can never be known. In both cases, Kant is correct.
But this battle of words is of no consequence. The point is that the more we try to grapple
with the noumenon, the more it eludes us. It is like holding grains of sand in the palm of our hand:
the more we take a grip on them, the more they pass out through the fingers. The trick is not to
think the unthinkable, and then we shall begin to comprehend the incomprehensible. This is what
is most difficult to understand in Kant's philosophy. It is by design that I call it Kant's secret
teaching. Kant himself does not speak of it, except negatively by saying that it cannot be known.
The word 'noumenon' is only a name, a label, which is being used solely for convenience. It is, if
you may, only a negative concept pointing at something that cannot be pointed at.
Consequences
What difference does it make if the noumenon is really unknowable? In the first place, if
the real nature of an entity cannot be known, then none of us will have the last word in philosophy,
since any such last word can only be the end of speculation, and speculation ends only where the
truth has fully revealed itself. Such a state of affairs does not seem to be warranted by the nature
of human knowledge, which is inexhaustibly phenomenal.24 But, more importantly Kant has
shown that the sea of philosophical discourse is only pure reason, and pure reason, being
unhampered by the requirements of experience, is free to carve out all possible speculative systems
out of sheer ideas. Here is the ultimate freedom of our thought, where philosophy breaks all barriers
and annihilate all bounds. That is the reward of giving up knowledge and substituting it with the
limitless activity of pure thought. Nay, the limits of speculation are those of reason itself, as it
supremely transcends the dictates of experience. This way it is no longer experience that regulates
thought but it is thought that regulates experience. This is the essential significance of what Kant
calls his copernical revolution.25 This is also the beginning of his practical philosophy.
Moreover, the realization that the noumenon lies beyond our reach will wake us up to the
fact that all our philosophical wranglings are rooted only in a profound misunderstanding. We
naturally fall prey to our own private insights, and the bits of truth which arrest us have a way of
engulfing our consciousness. As a result, we become enamored by our own systems of though and
are blind to views which are antagonistic to ours. It is true that we tend to reject what we fail to
understand, as an offshoot of which the world has been torn apart by petty feuds and quarrels.
Thus, the ultimate upshot of the critique of pure reason consists of this state of war being replaced
by perpetual peace.26 It is a kind of peace that proceeds from a high level of consciousness, one
that springs from self-knowledge. It is not a type of peace which is perpetuated by the despotic
surrender of the freedom and rights of man.27 On the contrary, it is that state of peace which grows
out of our increasing awareness of the right of man to express himself freely on matters of rational
as well as practical significance. Here we have our dream of a consciousness that has come of age,
after having realized the folly and futility of our speculative squabbles. It is my hope that the
emerging Filipino philosophy shall contribute toward its full realization.
 Filipino Philosophy28
What makes us optimistic that we, Filipinos, are in a position to take part in the shaping of
the new consciousness? I have two reasons. The first reason has to do with our history, or the lack
of it. For ours is largely a history not of our people but of our colonizers. 29 Why is it that our
memory usually goes back only as far as 1521? Why is it that our so-called pre-history is
essentially unknown? It is true that there are already some anthropological studies that delve into
the character of the Filipino before the coming of the Spaniards, but what has been known so far
is still too inadequate to merit the name of a remembrance. For all intents and purposes, we are a
people who have forgotten our roots. This cultural rootlessness is part of the explanation for our
lack of an indigenous philosophy.
But we can make this weakness a source of strength. Being devoid of any philosophical
tradition, we are not cooped up by a streamlined school of thought. We can afford to open our
minds to all intellectual trends, be they Eastern or Western. We can assimilate all truth, whichever
their source may be. For, in the final analysis, truths do not contradict each other, no matter how
contradictory they may seem on the surface. As Dr. Emerita Quito of De La Salle University fondly
says, there is no philosophy which is absolutely right that we should accept it in toto, nor one so
wholly wrong that we should condemn it outright.30
The second reason why we are qualified to take the forefront in the advance of the new
consciousness springs from our birthmark as Orientals. I go along with the judgement of many of
our contemporaries that ours is basically a synthetic and holistic consciousness.31 Our outlook, it
is said, is more concrete than abstract, more intuitive than discursive. As things now stand, our
philosophy is still selectively holistic and only partially global. We have not yet proven by deed
what we proclaim loudly in words. Most of us are still exclusivistic in our orientation, so that we
are still locked up in the confines of our favorite systems and theories.32 We are still Thomists or
Existentialists, Idealists or Materialists, Kantians or Hegelians, Phenomenologists or Positivists,
Westerners or Easterners.
Of course, that is understandable. Every genuine philosophy is a harbinger of a profound
insight that has a way of influencing every nook of human experience. For instance, the simplicity
of the Kantian pronouncement regarding the complete unknowability of the thing-in-itself, when
thoroughly comprehended, does affect the entire attitude of man. And this is true also of the other
great philosophies. Every philosophy is a potential interpreter of life in all its aspects. This explains
our tendency, natural perhaps, to be partial in favor of our cherished philosophy whose import is
usually no more than a justification of our personal lifestyle. We tend to reject anything that we do
not understand and take pleasure in throwing snide remarks at the great philosophers whose views
we do not share. We feel a certain elation at the prospect of having to disagree with an intellectual
giant, which we usually do with a dash of humor.
In short, while it is true that our Oriental mind is at home in the concrete and holistic, we
have yet failed to stand above the petty prejudices of our favored systems. If, then, we intend to
make good our word that ours is a truly global and synthetic consciousness, we shall do well to set
aside these philosophical hang-ups and regard all philosophies as potential bearers of truthful
insights.
Thus, the new consciousness is the consciousness neither of a Kantian nor a Hegelian,
neither of an Oriental nor an Occidentalist, neither of a Rationalist nor an Empiricist, neither of a
Platonist nor an Aristotelian. It is a truly universal consciousness, which is above the trifling
squabbles of narrow partisanships. It is a new mode of life, a new way of thinking, a manner of
society that has not yet been tried. We hope that it will also open up an original economic vision
which will shape up the roots of our depressed conditions and give new hope to the masses of our
people. For what our people need could be an ideal that they will recognize as their own, a vision
which will inspire them to action, a goal which they will be willing to sacrifice even their lives for.
So much for the philosopher's dream. And now back to reality. We see no elating prospects
as most countrymen of ours opt to leave our shores in search of a greener pasture abroad, where
they suffer the status of second-or third-rate citizens. We figure out no thrilling spectacles in the
puppetry of the media, the deepening state of social corruption, the fabulous display of wealth
amidst great poverty, the degradation of the mind through the propagation of superficial devices.
We see in all of this the death of our dream.
But dream the philosopher must. Marx dreamt of the communist state, Kant dreamt of
perpetual peace, Hegel dreamt of the complete satisfaction of the spiritual evolution, Nietzsche
dreamt of the Superman, Heidegger dreamt of a society of Dasein. A philosopher is a dreamer,
because he hears beyond the laughter of our people and feels intensely the sufferings of men, their
cares and desires, their joys and passions, their ambitions and failures. The only difference between
philosophers and other men is that philosophers strive to penetrate the root and cause of all these
yearnings and struggles. They are out to define the objective meaning of all that.
This is why philosophy, since time immemorial, has always sought to make itself a
science.33 It has consistently battled against the human prejudices and dared to resist every
established bias. It attempts, again and again, to reach for the thing in itself by breaking through
the barriers of our superimposed meanings. It favors utmost objectivity.
Prospects for a Filipino Philosophy
There is no reason why a Filipino should not be able to participate in this scientific
enterprise of a philosopher. It is true that we have no philosophical tradition to back us up, and we
are virtually a newcomer in the cultural game. But we can make a virtue of this seeming weakness.
Conscious of our self and jealous of our identity, we have now entered the exciting period of our
national adolescence.
It may be that our Filipino Philosopher is beginning from zero, but history attests to the
fact that this is not at all a deplorable state of affairs. Whitehead speaks of the entire European
intellectual tradition as nothing but a series of footnotes to Plato,34 and Plato's hero was man who
confessed to his knowing nothing. Likewise, at the threshold of the modern age, there was the
French philosopher who set aside all traditions of learning in order to start anew by way of
universal doubt. And there was Kant who spelled out the noumenon as completely beyond our
comprehension. Even more ancient than all of these are the Indian and Chinese traditions which
declare that Reality is inaccessible.
Who, in our contemporary age, is in a better position to start from scratch than, say, the
Filipino who is hazy about his indigenous culture? We call ourselves a product of East and West,
but is this not perhaps because we barely have anything that we can really call our own? On the
other hand, this hole in our being is precisely that which makes for the ease by which we are able
to grapple with alien ideas. This explains our ability to adapt with relative leisure to cultures which
are not of our making. It is because we lack a historically defined tradition that we are able to open
our minds to everything that reaches us. It is as if our poverty has disposed us to all sources of
wealth.
It is high time that we bid farewell to the age of childhood. Hitherto we have stood on the
shoulders of giants, both Oriental and Occidental. We are Platonists or Aristotelians, Kantians or
Hegelians, Existentialists or Positivists, Christians or Marxists, Easterners or Westerners. The task
of the future is to free ourselves from these giants and start making giants of ourselves.
No national philosophy will gain recognition without these giants. We shall not study
Greek Philosophy without Plato or Aristotle. Nor shall we venture to devote a course on German
Philosophy in the absence of Leibniz or Kant. British philosophy is a misnomer if there is neither
Locke nor Hume. French philosophy is unimaginable if Descartes is excepted. Likewise, there will
be no Indian Philosophy without the likes of Shankara. And what is Chinese Philosophy without
Confucius?
A Socrates or a Confucius of Philippine Philosophy will be a prerequisite if our philosophy
is finally to come of age. The mission of the present age is summed up in one word—
EXCELLENCE, a commodity which, in our country, is still extremely rare. But there is hope, so
long as there are brave and heroic souls among us.
It is my opinion that if there shall be a golden age of Philippine Culture, it shall only be in
the light of the emergence of a truly distinct, but universal, Filipino Philosophy. I think that what
the present era requires is precisely a new consciousness which shall be the embodiment of this
age's synthetic outlook. What this epoch needs is a new synthesis, whose final shape has not yet
been written. However, write it, one must. For, as it shall be the saving idea for this and the next
generations, it might as well be the contribution of the Filipino to universal philosophy.
 NOTES
1. Karl Japsers, Kant, tr. R. Manheim, New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc.,
A Havest Book, 1962, p.6.
2. This is the conclusion of both Transcendental Aesthetic and Transcendental
Analytic, the consequence of which is the Transcendental Dialectic.
3. "I do not mean by this a criticism of books and systems, but of the faculty of
reason in general" ("Ich verstehe aber nierunter nicht eine Kritik der Bücher und
Systeme, sondern die des Vernunftvermogens überhaupt...") (Axii).
4. "It is, at the same time, a powerful appeal to reason to undertake anew the most
difficult of its duties, namely, self-knowledge..." ("...idas beschwerlichste aller
ihrer Geschafte, namlich das der Selbsterkenntnis aufs neue zu übernehmen")
(Axi).
5. Phaedrus 230a.
6. "Intuitions without concepts are blind, thoughts without contents are empty."
(A51, B75).
7. See Transcendental Aesthetic.
8. The conclusion of the Transcendental Aesthetic runs as follows: "Here, then, we
have one of the requisites for the solution of the general problem of
transcendental philosophy. How are synthetical propositions a priori possible?
Namely, pure intuitions a priori, space and time. In them we find, if in a
judgement a priori we want to go beyond a given concept, that which can be
discovered a priori, not in the concept, but in the intuition corresponding to it, and
can be connected with it synthetically. For this very reason, however, such
judgments can never go beyond the objects of the senses, but are valid only for
objects of possible experience." (B73)
9. See Transcendental Analytic of Concepts.
10. A81, B107.
11. "Custom is that principle by which this correspondence (of cause and effect) has
been effected..." (An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section V).
12. The complete Table of Categories includes: I. Of Quantity (Unity, Plurality,
Totality); II. Of Quality (Reality, Negation, Limitation); III. Of Relation
(Substance and Accident, Cause and Effect, Action and Passion: Community); IV.
Of Modality (Possibility-Impossibility, Existence-Non-Existence, Necessity-
Contingency). (A80, B106)
13. The conclusion of the Transcendental Analytic is contained in the chapter entitled
'On the Ground of the Distinction of all Subjects into Phenomena and Noumena'
(Elementarlehre, II. Teil, I. Abteilung, II. Buch, III. Hauptstuck)
14. I tackle this theme in my forthcoming book entitled Criticism and Eternal Peace.
15. "The critique of pure reason may really be looked upon as the true tribunal for all
disputes of reason; for it is not concerned in these disputes which refer to objects
immediately, but is intended to fix and to determine the rights of reason in
general, according to the principles of its original institution." (A751, B779)
16. "It is not self-conceit which justifies me in this confidence, but the experimental
evidence produced by the identity of the result..." (Bxxxviii) "While I am saying
this I fancy I observe in the face of my readers an expression of indignation,
mixed with contempt, at pretentions apparently so self-glorious and extravagant;
and yet they are in reality far more moderate than those made by the writer of the
commonest essay professing to prove the simple nature of the soul or the
necessity of a first beginning of the world. For while he pretends to extend human
knowledge beyond the limits of all possible experience, I confess most humbly
that this is entirely beyond my power." (Axiv)
17. See Transcendental Dialectic, Antinomy of Pure Reason.
18. "Ich muBte also das Wissen aufheben, um zum Glauben Platz zu bekommen..."
(Bxxx)
19. "Thus we see that there is really no antithetic of pure reason." ("Auf solche Weise
gibt es eigentlich gar keine Antithetik der reinen Vernunft.") (A743, B771)
20. Kant distinguishes between the positive and the negative sense of the word
'noumenon'. "If by noumenon we mean a thing so far as it is not an object of our
sensuous intuition, and make abstraction of our mode of intuition, it may be called
a noumenon in a negative sense. If, however, we mean by it an object of a non-
sensuous intuition, we admit thereby a peculiar mode of intuition, namely, the
intellectual, which, however, is not our own, nor one of which we can understand
even the possibility. This would be the noumenon in the positive sense." (B307)
21. Apology, 21. "But the truth of the matter, gentlemen, is pretty certainly this, that
real wisdom is the property of God, and this oracle is his way of telling us that
human wisdom has little or no value. It seems to me that he is not referring
literally to Socrates, but has merely taken my name as an example, as he would
say to us. The wisest of you men is he who has realized, like Socrates, that in
respect of wisdom he is really worthless." (Apology, 23, tr. Hugh Tredennick)
22. Josef Pieper, The Silence of St. Thomas, tr. Murray and O'Connor, Chicago;
Henry Regnery Co., 1957, p. 40.
23. See footnote 13.
24. It is not an accident that Kant's Critique of Pure Reason has its consequences
culminating in the Hegelian Phenomenology of the Spirit. In the latter work,
Hegel aims to present the entirety of Science in terms of the almost ceaseless
unfolding of the 'Geist' in history.
25. Bxvi.
26. "Without such a critique, reason may be said to be in a state of nature, and unable
to establish and defend its assertions and claims except by war. The critique of
pure reason, on the contrary, which bases all its decisions on the indisputable
principles of its own original institution, secures for us the peace of a legal status,
in which disputes are not to be carried on except in the proper form of lawsuit. In
the former state such disputes generally end in both parties claiming victory,
which is followed by an uncertain peace, maintained chiefly by the civil power,
 while in the latter state a sentence is pronounced which, as it goes to the very
roots of the dispute, must secure an eternal peace." (A751-752, B779-780)
27. Kant mentions the name of Thomas Hobbes. We may add that of Niccolo
Machiavelli.
28. The following discussion is taken from a paper entitled 'Rationale for a Filipino
Philosophy', read before the Philosophy Circle of DLSU on 15 March 1982.
29. Teodoro Agoncillo remarks that "the documents of the pre-1872 Philippines deal
almost exclusively with the history of Spain in the Philippines." (History of the
Filipino People, Quezon City: Malaya Books, 1967, p. vi).
30. "...there is no philosophical system that is completely wrong, hence to be
summarily condemned, nor is there one that is completely right, and therefore to
be totally accepted." (Quito, Address on A New Concept of Philosophy, Manila:
U. S. T. Press, 1967, p. 11)
31. E. G. Leonardo Mercado speaks of "the Filipino's holistic view of himself, his
concrete way of thinking, his non-dualistic world view," although I wonder
whether he is completely right in claiming this to be what makes the Filipino
"different from the Westerner". (Elements of Filipino Philosophy, Tacloban City:
Divine Word University Publications, 1974, p. 79).
32. See my paper entitled "Philosophy in the Philippines: Status and Prospects" read
at the Annual Convention of the National Social Science Research Council at Los
Baños, September 1981.
33. Plato's dialectical approach to philosophical problems was intended to provide
speculative inquiry with a scientific method. The syllogistic logic fathered by
Aristotle, which St. Thomas Aquinas made use of, was aimed at doing away with
sources of errors. At the threshold of the modern age, a string of illustrious names
has endeavored to reconstruct the scientific foundation of philosophy. Among
these were Francis Bacon and René Descartes. All the biggest names in German
Philosophy from Kant to Hegel had no doubt in mind the cause of science in their
philosophizing. Even in our own days, the search for the correct method has not
abated. We can name only a few of the more important attempts: Phenomenology,
Logical Positivism, Structuralism, etc.
34. "The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that
it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." (Whitehead, Process and Reality, Ch.
I, Sec. 1)